YES!!!! Another month has passed! I recently wrote on my Facebook that I wish I could fast forward time to get me home then turn on the slow motion so that I could spend a ton of time with my wife and kids. These deployments sure make me think about how lucky I am to have great wife and kids. I sure would not be the person I am today without them.
Happy Mother’s Day by the way to my wife and mothers!
We have been working hard this previous month. As SSG Savre wrote we are looking forward to getting out of here and back home. It sure has been a growing experience and this deployment will remind me of all of the great things I have at home. Warm clean showers, big soft beds, carpet, sinks, soap, flushing toilets, grass, trees, and on and on… I think it is ok to say that I will see most of you next month.
May started out with a memorial run/walk for our fallen brother SPC Cauley. SSG Savre and another Soldier came up with the idea a few months back and all of us jumped on board. We had a T-shirt designed, ordered, and shipped from Minnesota. Banners were made to commemorate the event. Our battalion came in and made it a bigger event than we dreamed of. They built a building for all of the Soldiers that has TVs, PlayStations, Wiis, phones, computers, and a theater. All of the equipment was donated by the USO. The building dedication was the same day as the run. Our battalion decided to call this new building Cauley’s Corner. It was and is such a fitting tribute to SPC Cauley. We started our run early in the morning, with about 500 Soldiers participating! We ran 4.03 miles, significant because that was Cauley’s truck number, 403. After the run we dedicated Cauley’s Corner and then had a talent show. It was a great way to start our last full month in Afghanistan.
Another surprise delivered by the USO was an acoustic concert by Toby Keith. He came to FOB Leatherneck and put on a great show for all of us on the FOB. This was another great way to finish out or deployment.
Now we are focusing on getting home safe and sound. Many of us have looked back at the last year and have some sense of pride to take with us. We have been a great group of Soldiers and we have definitely shown our Active Duty family that the Minnesota Guard is pretty awesome!
This will probably be my last blog until I return to the states. I thank all of you for reading this far. Please continue to check back. See you soon!!
I thought it would be a good idea to have my co-worker write a blog for the readers. SSG Heidi Savre is from Moorhead and works in the Administrative section with me. She wrote the below for one of our monthly newsletters. I don’t think I could have summed up the last month any better. Thanks for reading!
We may not be experiencing the first big snow melt, looking for the first robin, or for the green grass to grow but Spring is in the air here for the Soldiers of the 114th Transportation Company!!! The switch has been flipped from cold to hot and from heat to air conditioning. However just like being at home, spirits are rising with the temperatures and longer days spring cleaning is being done and everyone is enjoying being outside working and partaking in extracurricular activities (when time permits).
As missions continue, Soldiers are also starting the preparation for our departure. Inventories, inspections, prepping and packing of equipment, paperwork and even mailing personal items home. We are also finalizing plans for our first Specialist Cauley Memorial Run being held here at FOB Leather-neck. T-Shirts and banners are in and Soldiers are training for the 4.03 mile run/walk. Our fellows Soldiers in the 68th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion have shown the touching gesture of naming the first MWR center “Cauley’s Corner.” We are hoping to have the dedication ceremony the day of the run to make it that much more memorable.
Soldiers of the 114th have received an amazing amount of support and have recently “paid it forward” so to speak. With a new unit arriving, we have shared the support with providing some of the basic hygiene items and snacks. The Soldiers, from Rocky Mount N.C., received a dose of “Minnesota Nice” we have all been so fortunate to receive the last 10 plus months.
We are all focused to finish off our mission and looking forward to our return to Minnesota and respective States.
I have been inspired to write you all once again! This morning we were finally allowed to run our half marathon! The Hesco Half Marathon started at eight this morning and it was a perfect day to run. Well for what we have here it was. I thought I would describe what it was like. First off it was put on our friends on the United Kingdom base next to our base. They raised money for two charities and raised almost $6,000! It was great to know that my small donation went to a greater cause!
I do not claim to be a “runner” but do claim to love running. It was something that took me some time to like and eventually love. I have also found that I am a runner that needs to constantly train. I am not a natural and I still have a long way to go. So on to my story for the day.
We started our run as I said at eight this morning. I have written that the temperatures here were cold, well that has changed again, now it is warming up. It feels good to have some heat, as I am sure you are all waiting for! I am also sure that in a few more weeks from now I will be writing about how HOT it is here! I would guess the temp for the run was in the 70’s, perfect!
As we started our run I noticed that it felt much hotter. The first thing I noticed was that the wind was going to be a challenge. It was against us most of the way but it seemed to cool me down. I mentioned to the person running with me that it was funny that the wind was at our faces most of the way and kept us somewhat cool, but when at our backs, it seemed to disappear!
Another thing about our location is that there are helicopters flying all of the time. I could sit and listen to them all day. I love the sound of them above me. Today we had a few fly over us, it was awesome!
The roads we run on are just like the gravel roads in our rural areas. They are pretty beat up most of the time and the dust is crazy. Not as bad as my last blog, but after mile nine, it gets to be a lot! After a few miles, you can feel every rock that you hit, not a great feeling. Traffic here was not stopped for our little run so we had to make sure we were aware of our surroundings.
This course had a lot of turns, which was nice for the changes of scenery but it messed with you a bit, the longer stretches seemed really long! I kept a pretty good pace. I usually run my heart out and then get tired at the end. My new strategy is to get a good pace and stick to it, until the end, and then run my heart out.
The finish is always the best part. Most runners stick around and cheer on the people coming in, it is great to have people out there cheering for you and motivation helps me keep moving. I am always happy with my performance and that I even finished the thing. It was a great morning. Now time to relax for the rest of the day and take care of my legs!
Tonight I have a good story to tell. I have been trying to run as much as possible on our base, training for a half marathon on Sunday. It has been warming up and the time to run is either in the morning or at night. The afternoons are getting warm and the traffic is pretty bad. I am not a morning person, so the night time is the right time for me.
Tonight I was running with a guy from my unit. We noticed the wind was picking up and that some storm clouds were moving in. It seemed to be an ok time to run, my father-in-law runs when it is subzero temperatures, I felt that I could do this little run. We were heading out for our first mile, the wind was pretty strong so we decided to turn around and head back to our tents. It was the second mile that things seemed to change.
As we were running, we saw what looked like a huge cloud of thick black smoke. We knew it was sand, and thought that maybe we should stop to let it blow by. My previous Iraq experiences told me that most sand storms do not just “blow by”. We decided to run head first into it, hoping that it would not be that far until we were out of it. I could feel the sand starting to hit my face, not hard but I could feel it. Soon I felt like I was in the middle of a good old Minnesota fog. I could not see any lights in front of me, or my running partner behind me. I stopped a couple of times to flash my light on him, he flashed his light back. As we ran, trash was blowing all around us. I felt like I was in a horror movie, waiting to hear him or myself being sucked up by the huge storm cloud.
It only took us about five minutes, but felt longer, to make it through the cloud and back to the lighted streets. We laughed about how we saw it and decided to take it on. I took a picture of myself; it does not do justice to the amount of dust that is blowing around or what is in my lungs, but it makes my hair look almost white. I am sure I will be coughing it up for the next year.
I am happy to be writing this blog for one reason, another month has gone by! I was hoping to write about watching the Vikings win the Super Bowl and how great it was to celebrate with the fan over here. I was also hoping to write you about running a half marathon in Afghanistan, neither of which happened. I do however want to send an update about what has been going on.
First is about the Super Bowl party we did have. It was a dreary day here, about the second day of off and on rain. We did manage to get some horseshoe pits installed, two sets of ladder golf, and a set of bean bag boards up. There were mini competitions going and grills burning. We had a great social hour or two and then most of us headed to our rooms, some stayed up and watched the Super Bowl at 4 am our time.
I would also like to tell you about the crazy weather we have. Many think that in the desert it is always HOT, not the case here. We have been having cold, not Minnesota cold, but cold weather here. I would guess it gets into lows of 30 and highs of 50. One day we had hail and the next sun the day after that is rain. In the mornings, the water puddles are frozen solid and many wear fleece hats and jackets with their long johns underneath. It may be a good thing that we are from Minnesota and we are kind of used to the extreme weather changes. I also find it funny that the one thing that most Minnesota’s can talk about is the weather, no matter what the conversation may be; it begins or ends about the weather.
We will be hitting another critical point in our deployment, double digits. It is a great feeling and many of us have some sort of countdown. It is great to see that the time here is coming to an end and that all of our hard work will start to wind down. It is a great feeling to know that soon we will be back in the USA, where the grass, we hope is green, the water is good enough to drink out of the sink, and we will not have to take a shower with flip flops. I know that my wife and kids are VERY excited to have me home, I am just as excited.
Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. Please continue to pray for all of the troops. Thank you to the ones that have served and especially the ones that gave their lives.
Hello everyone! I apologize for not writing for such a long time. I have had a bit of writers block! I would compare our time here like the movie, “Groundhogs Day”. I did have a different type of day on Sunday and would like to share it with you.
I was able to sleep in a little on Sunday; it was a nice break from the demanding days in my office. My coworker is on her 2 week leave and it has been crazy without her help! I woke up and took a shower in our shower tents, which have a water heater! (I may have mentioned that in a previous blog). It was great to have a hot shower. Anyways I got to work and started my day off by reviewing a stack or two of paperwork. I review and submit paperwork for things like pay, awards, promotions, evaluations, and other things that are important in the career of a Soldier. Well I did this for most of my morning. I went to eat lunch at our chow hall. I usually eat a microwave meal that was sent to me, but this day I felt it would be good to get out of the office. Well to my surprise they had Chicken Cordon Blue! I love the stuff so much I ate two. I had a nice conversation with my buddies, I am sure it was about our countdown until we leave or something else Military.
After lunch I went back to my office and heard some singing outside. I remembered it was the first “Afghan Idol” competition. I went out to enjoy the sounds of 6 groups of Soldiers battle out their karaoke skills. A Staff Sergeant from our company got second place! It was good to see some enjoyment happening. It was a bit different not seeing karaoke being sung in a bar, but we make due. It takes a lot of courage to get up in front of people and sing a song without some help!
After these festivities I went over to our Maintenance section and joined a group of faithful Vikings fans gathering for a grill and conversation. One of the guys downloaded a recent episode from KFAN and we all listened to the people on the show having a great time. A couple of our extremely talented grill chefs cooked up some delicious chicken and steak. It was a great escape from our daily life here.
A dedicated group of 40 or so of us stayed up until 10:30 pm our time to watch the Vikings stomp the Cowboys! It was well worth it to stay up until 2:00 am to see how amazing the Vikings have become. I told a guy recently that as much as I did not want to admit it, Bret Favre made me a football fan.
My next day started again at 6:00 am, but with the pride of our state flowing through many of us, it was a great day. Happy New Year everyone! Be sure to welcome home the men and women who are returning home, remember the ones who are still here or are leaving their families soon, and never forget the ones who have given their lives.
Christmas season is in the air for the majority of us here at FOB Leatherneck. We have some small trees up with little decorations and some battery powered lights and a few wrapped presents to give it that extra Christmas feeling. We also have some stockings hung up and my office has a candy cane countdown.
We have also received an unbelievable incredible amount of support from so many people from our homes, to the entire State, and even other states! All of us here are so grateful and cannot say thank you enough for all of your efforts and support. We also know that thoughts and prayers flood us daily and we certainly appreciate all of them.
Next week is already Christmas! It is hard to believe where the time has gone and we are also grateful for that. It is definitely a time what we can sit back and reflect on all that has happened in the last year and look very happily to the next year. It is a time that we wish that we were at home enjoying the snow and all the great things we can do with the season. I personally miss the snowmobiling and plowing the many driveways my brother has me help with. I also miss building snowmen and sledding with my kids. I wish I was home to go shopping for gifts and to see my children's eyes when they open their presents. The smell of cookies and turkey filling the air! Many of us will miss all of these things but it is also a great feeling to know that our families are safe at home.
I would also like to take this time to thank the veterans before me, serving with me, and the future ones that will help protect my family and friends. It is a great feeling knowing there are so many that fight for our freedoms and safety. With that I would also like to thank the families of these Veterans. I was thinking to day that without my family I could not do this. I have said it before and will say it again that my wife and kids have served just as much as me and to them and all military families, Thank you.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!! Thank you again for all of your love and support!
I thought I would write this time about the advances of communication since past wars. Every day I am amazed and grateful for what I am able to accomplish while I am here. My job is mainly spent staring at a computer and doing research. I honestly love my job in the Army and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that I am helping out my fellow Soldiers.
With that, I think of wars past and all that the people in my MOS (military job) had to do to accomplish their missions. It is hard to imagine not having a computer, a printer, and a scanner. It is even harder to imagine not having the internet. Though it is not the best connections and a lot of sites are blocked it still enables me to do some pretty amazing things.
In my job, I do many things that include typing memos and making spreadsheets. I look up regulations and information for just about everyone that has a question. I take the information that I accumulate and put it on a centrally located storage space and at times I am required to send information back to our armory at home. It usually only takes about 12 hours or less, because of time change, to get a reply or to have someone update records. This in itself is sometimes hard to believe. Like I said, I cannot imagine what the guys had to go through in previous wars.
In my family life I can and take full advantage of text messaging. I can instantly send my wife and daughters a text to tell them that I love them or to see how their day is going. I can send my wife an email with a lengthy letter and she can check it right on her Blackberry. This is amazing! I have set up email accounts for my daughters so that I can send them instant picture updates and letters of my “adventure” as I call it. They all have a phone with a camera on it, they can send me pictures of those moments that I would otherwise miss or they would have missed because of bulky cameras.
We are starting to get wireless internet access in some points. I can get on most pages like Facebook and the Waseca County News website. I can also get on Skype. Skype has allowed us to talk for many minutes without costing us a dime. It has enabled me to see my family and see how they are growing and changing. I also love access to the other sites because it makes me feel closer to home. It is great to see what is going on around town and to see what my friends and family are up to. I have reconnected with most of my High School classmates, friends from Basic Training, and even relatives that I have not talked to in years. All of this is from a war zone.
It is hard to be away from home. It is hard to see your family grow up through photos and emails. It does make it easier though with the great technology that we have in front of us. Sometimes we can get irritated with a cell phone ring or even take it for granted. I do however appreciate that we have these things to stay connected with home.
We have hit a critical time in our deployment calculator. Thanksgiving!! It is known that many of us countdown to deployment, countdown to the time we get into our base, and the time we are leaving for home. The latter being the most important.
I try not to countdown the entire deployment, but take it in chunks. The first being my Rest & Recuperation (R&R) or vacation from here, the second Thanksgiving, third is Christmas and New Years, and last getting out of here. Another trick I learned was to count the weeks before the exact days, once we get into the single digit weeks I will switch to days. All of this is a key to staying positive.
Thanksgiving at FOB Leatherneck was way better than I expected. It is always tough being away from family, especially for significant events like Thanksgiving but the bond I have formed with people here made it a bit easier.
Our noon meal was like being at your favorite buffet. I could not say no to all of the food that was being handed to me. We had roast beef cut straight from the bone, roast turkey, ham, shrimp cocktail, sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, dressing, green beans, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, egg nog, ice cream, and much more!
After our meal we had a Battalion flag football tournament. Our company took second. It was a great way to end the afternoon and to end a pretty good Thanksgiving.
Hello again from Afghanistan. Since the last time I wrote I have been home for a few weeks and am now back to my base. It was great to be home and see all of the changes that have happened with my family. It was sure great to be with my wife and kids for that time.
My wife is sure an awesome person and is doing an amazing job of keeping the family together and moving smoothly while I am gone. She is an inspiration and one of my heroes.
They often say that our families back home have it much harder than we do here and I believe that. She is doing the duty of both parents and is responsible for the two of us. She is going to school full time while getting three of our kids off to school. She is getting the kids to their after school activities as well as doing her homework. I am a lucky guy to have her. We recently celebrated our 5th Anniversary, this being the third one that I have missed due to deployments.
As I said I am back here in Afghanistan and trying to now get used to another climate change, this time the COLD! I know it is hard to believe that in the middle of a desert a person can be cold but it is. The nightly temp reaches around 45 degrees. I am the first to admit that just because I am from Minnesota I still think it is cold.
The Army has done a good job of issuing us some good cold weather gear, which I use with a big smile on my face. I was trying to think the other day whether I liked the cold more than the heat and after asking some of my buddies we agreed the cold was better.
As my mother taught me it is better to have on layers and take them off than not have enough and get sick. One improvement is that they hooked a hot water heater up to our showers! It is now a pleasure to take a shower.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
This last week in Afghanistan has been one of sadness and time of reflection. We started out our week with news that we lost one of our fellow brothers. I say brother because after experiences like this you all form a special bond. It amazes me that a group of people from all over the state and some from other states, can come together and become so close. That is one of the main reasons I love the military.
We all joined together and have been looking out for each other. We have all reflected on what is important to us and all seem to have a different outlook on what it is we are doing here. Our memorial service for SPC George Cauley was a great tribute to his service and to the spirit of what kind of person he was. It was a time to remember what he did to defend freedom for his country and people from other countries. I thought about what he did for me and my family and how I will teach my kids that he is a true American hero.
After the service we had a grill out. I brought the ladder golf game that my mom had sent and few guys brought their bean bag board game. Other activities included cribbage, Frisbee, touch football, and some good old socializing. It was a great time to decompress and be with people.
We started our day today by being presented with our “combat patch”. This is a tradition that has been around since the Revolutionary War, started by General George Washington. The Army is the only branch that is authorized to wear a patch on their right sleeve and our unit is the first ones to be authorized to wear our particular patch. (I like history) We were also able to promote some well deserving Soldiers. Again it was nice to be together, to go through an experience with a group of people.
Deployments are hard on a Soldier, their family, their friends, and even the community especially when there is a loss. After the events of this last week I understand a little more about what it means to be in the military. Although many of our experiences are different and we have had different things happen, I know that when I meet someone that has served I always have a friend and something to talk about. There are so many interesting stories out there, I encourage anyone to sit and listen to a Veteran tell them.
After all of this reflection a great thing did happen today. The people from the Outback Steakhouse and Bonefish Grill came to our camp and cooked us one of the most delicious meals that I have eaten since I left the States. It is amazing what one event can do to change the morale of the troops. Everyone in the chow hall was full of smiles and talking about how awesome it was that they did that for us.
When we got here we were not expecting much. We were told that it was nothing like Iraq and that we were going to a place in the desert. I didn’t have many high hopes so when we did arrive at FOB Leatherneck I was surprised at how good we actually had it!
One of the things that I found to be a bit different was the shower situation. Here is an example for you to put it into perspective.
Everything we do here is in tents. There are a few wooden buildings but mainly tents. The shower tent is located about a half a block from the tent I sleep in. One morning it was pretty warm already and I was sweating before I reached the showers. I was pretty happy to get a layer of dirt and sweat off of me.
When I opened the door to the tent it was actually bigger than it seemed. There is a big area to get ready for the shower and there are a dozen sinks on the outside of another tent within the tent that has a dozen showers in it. The air conditioning was working pretty well in the shower tent that day. I was pretty surprised about it considering it was already warm outside. I cleaned that layer of dirt off me and got ready to start my day. I was feeling pretty good, I was clean and cool. I opened the door to the great outdoors and instantly heat and dust hit me. I now had a fresh layer of dust and sweat for the day.
I say dust because the sand here is so fine it is called moon sand. When you walk in it little clouds form at your feet and when vehicles drive in it a layer of dust forms looking like a good Minnesota fog. It is everywhere and very hard to hide from.
Another thing I learned about the showers is that I am at the mercy of the temperature outside as to how warm of a shower I will get. I have found that if I take a shower in the evenings the water is actually pretty warm from the heat of the day and if I take a shower in the morning, it is naturally colder. The dilemma comes when it is already 95 in the morning but the sun has not heated up the water, thus the previous experience happens.
A few days last week the water pump must have been out in the showers that I usually go to. I had the choice to walk a few “blocks” to another shower or to take bottles of water and dump them over me. Being the guy I am I chose option two, still clean, just a bit colder!
I can say one thing, I am very happy that we get to take showers. I know that it could always be worse. We are pretty fortunate. I am pretty excited to go home and turn on my shower to whatever temperature that I want it to be. It is amazing the little things we take for granted.
I have been waiting to write about this one since we got here. It is something I notice every night before chow. “It” being the Sun setting in the West and the Moon appearing in the East. It is one of the most amazing things that I have seen here. Both are almost always a perfect circle and both dominate the sky with their presence.The moon is a bluish grey color and the sun is shades of yellow and orange.
I would guess the reason we notice such beauty is because we are in the middle of the desert. We are in a place with dull and dirty colors. Tones of uniforms as well as green tents that are now tanned from the dust and our vehicles that are shades of tan and green are the only bits of color that we see. There is a lack of true beauty here what little there is seems to be distorted by the numerous dust and wind storms that are here.
I have made many attempts to try to take a great picture of both but my camera has taken a beating in the last few years. It does not take that great of pictures.
To make it even better, there were clouds in the sky. That too is an amazing site in a dreary land. I did get some pretty nice pictures from it. I hope to show them off sometime.
The enclosed photos are from my coworker SGT Savre.
My name is Jeremiah Miller. I am currently deployed to Afghanistan with the Minnesota National Guard. My unit is out of Duluth. I am excited to write a blog for you to read. I plan on writing about some of the daily things that I observe around our Forward Operating Base (FOB) Leatherneck.
The first thing I would like to tell you is that I am an Administrative Specialist. I work on Soldiers issues and try to get them all of the information they need to be successful in their military career. I sit at a desk and as my daughter wrote one Veterans Day, I work behind a computer. I love my job in the military and feel that I am good at it. I love helping Soldiers and showing them all the benefits that they have earned. My intentions are to share only my experiences and if possible with help some of my fellow Soldiers. I do not intent to represent anyone but myself and my experiences.
Now on to my blog. I am what some in the Military call a FOBIT, or a person that does not leave the wire. I am happy being called such, for the reasons above. I have a lot of respect for the guys and gals that do go out and put their lives on the line.I am content being a FOBIT and with this I am going to share some observations that we experience on our FOB.
I hope you will enjoy some of my experiences and I hope it gives a very small picture of what goes on here.
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